Good design does not just happen, except in nature. Instead, design involves a conscious, subjective process of selecting and organizing materials and objects in a visually pleasing way. When well executed, good design is as functional and comfortable as it is beautiful. But design is not just the province of interior decorators, designers, and architects. Every time the average consumer chooses a paint color or arranges furniture in a room, they are making design decisions.
While there are basic guidelines for those design decisions, the most important tool a consumer has is his/her eyes. Consumers must be observant, have options, learn to recognize things that please them, and analyze why.
Color, space, line, texture and pattern are all critical in decorating. A successful mix of these factors helps achieve a balanced, visually appealing scheme. Among those factors, color is perhaps the most powerful decorating tool at one's disposal. While the human eye can discern more than six million colors, only a fraction of those are generally used in decorating and design.
Because it is difficult to use words to describe what is visual, it is important that the basic terminology of color be understood. The color wheel is a useful tool when discussing color fundamentals. FIG. 1 shows a simplified color wheel. The color wheel shows the basic twelve colors in their pure form. The primary colors, red 1, blue 2 and yellow 3, make up all other colors. Secondary colors lie midway between the primary colors on the color wheel. These colors come from combining the primary colors: yellow 3+red 1=orange 4; yellow 3+blue 2=green 5; and red 1+blue 2=violet 6 (often called purple). Intermediate colors result from mixing a primary color with an adjacent secondary color on the color wheel. For example, red 1 (a primary) and violet 6 (a secondary) combine to make red-violet 7. There are six intermediate colors on the color wheel: yellow-green 8, blue-green 9, blue-violet 10, red-violet 7, red-orange 11 and yellow-orange 12. Not only do colors have these fundamental structures, but they also have characteristics; the qualities that give colors personality and character. These characteristics include, hue, value, and temperature.
Hue is just another word for color. Turquoise and crimson are hues; so are softer colors like lilac and butter cream. The terms hue and color are used interchangeably.
Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. Of course, there are infinite variations in value, from the lightest lights to the darkest darks. Mint, for example, is a light value of green. Navy is a dark value of blue. Each pure color has a natural value; that is, yellow is naturally light, while violet is naturally dark. Light-value colors are pale versions of the pure colors. Pink is a light value of red. Peach is a light value of orange. And iris is a light value of blue-violet. Light-value colors are not limited to colors referred to as “pastels.” Lavender, melon and coral are light-value colors, but they are stronger than hues that might be used in a nursery. Medium-value colors are midway on the scale of light to dark. Dark-value colors often have descriptive names—spice, indigo and walnut, for example. Shade is a color that has been darkened by the addition of black or a darker color.
Temperature is an aspect of color that is generally easy to grasp. Referring to FIG. 1, if an imaginary line is drawn on the color wheel from red-violet 7 to yellow-green 8, the colors to the left—yellows, reds and oranges—are the warm hues. Warm colors are considered to be “advancing” because they seem as though they are coming closer to the viewer. On walls, warm colors can make a room feel cozy and enveloping. The colors to the right of that imaginary line on the color ring—greens, blues and violets—are the cool hues. They appear to be farther away, which is why they are called “receding” colors. On walls, cool colors can make a room feel spacious and calm. Visual temperature is relative. Red-violet and yellow-green may seem warm or cool, depending on the presence of other colors. Next to orange, red-violet looks cool; next to blue, it looks warm. Visual temperature comes into play when colors are combined in a decorating scheme. In general, the juxtaposition of warm and cool color intensifies each. If one room is painted a warm red and an adjoining room a cool green, each will seem more intensely warm or cool. This effect also works within a room; cool walls make a warm wood floor seem even warmer.
As previously stated, color is perhaps the most powerful design tool. Most consumers and professionals begin decorating and design projects with a discussion of color and color schemes. For most items, however, color is just one of the choices that must be made. For each color there are generally many choices of patterns and designs to choose from. This is certainly true for fabrics, leather, rugs, carpet and trim, where the variety of designs and patterns to choose from can be mind numbing.
Traditionally, consumers and professionals have been forced to travel to showrooms to look at all the different patterns, designs, and colors available for a certain item. Once at the showroom, consumers are then forced to ferret through large, heavy volumes of swatches showing the various patterns, designs, and color combinations available. After going through this time consuming process, consumers are often left with a handful of swatches which they must then take back home so that they can be matched against existing materials.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method and system for not only selecting products that correspond to limited/basic colors, but also a method and system that efficiently and systematically presents for consideration variations of the initially selected color. Further, there is a need for a method and system that presents for consideration a multitude of aesthetic (e.g., designs) and physical features (e.g., the material and manner of construction) of products in an efficient and effective manner.